30 August 2015

Teerenpeliis
a Finnish restaurant chain with their own brewery and distillery. In
their bars and restaurants they offer a wide range of their own
beers, ciders and whiskies. On my recent holiday in Finland I visited
their establishments in two cities, Helsinki and Tampere, and I am
collecting my experiences in each of the bars into this one post. Of
course each and every one of them has an individual character and
flair, but as it's a chain with the same drinks and food, it's
perhaps clearer and easier this way.

This summer I
particularly became a fan of their ciders. I mainly drank the
lingonberry and blueberry flavoured ciders, which in my opinion can't
be compared to any other fruity ciders that I have tasted. They are
more on the dry side and the berry taste and the colouring are very
intense.

The beer selection
is very good and they should have all the styles that anyone could
desire. Some of their bottled beers can be also obtained in Finnish
supermarkets.

Their whiskies are
so amazing, and I never thought that I could enjoy whisky straight
this much, as I have done lately! I am soon going to write a separate
tasting post of one Teerenpeli whisky.

The atmosphere in
these bars and restaurants is relaxed and the staff is always putting
an extra effort in in friendliness and service. This chain and their
products are highly recommended by me, so if you'll ever get the
chance, pay them a visit or try some of their products!

29 August 2015

Let's start this
weekend by posting a healthy recipe, as I probably will cook and bake
something naughty later today. This vegan salad could be an idea for
your lunch box next week. It's quite filling thanks to the beans and
it tastes just as vibrant as it looks. This is quite a good type of
salad I find and should make these more often.

Ingredients

1 can red kidney
beans

200 g tomatoes

1 red romano
pepper

1 small salad
onion

Gem lettuce

Pumpkin seeds

Olive oil

Salt

Ground black
pepper

Method

Chop the tomatoes
and peppers into smallish cubes.

Slice the salad
onion finely and cut the gem lettuce into slices.

Mix all the
ingredients in a bowl and dress with olive oil. You can also add
vinegar of your choice.

25 August 2015

It was nice to come back from holiday
and see all the progress my plants had been making and that they were
alive and well. So big thanks to the watering help!

It's starting to look increasingly red
over there and I have been able to harvest many tomatoes already.
Some will stay very tiny in the size, but they are still very tasty,
a perfect addition to be eaten fresh with any meal. And if there are
too many, I can always make a sauce. The bell peppers are turning red
as well and so are the chillies. What a jolly redness! Here are some
photos to show the situation of my balcony garden in August.

24 August 2015

Sometimes I just
need to have this sort of a meal, a cheesy vegetable bake, a creamy
sauce and roasted potatoes. It's such comfort food for me, and surely
for many others, but I don't make these kind of meals that often
anymore. Normally I prefer lighter meals, but isn't it just nice to
be a little naughty sometimes? Especially now when the weather is so
rainy and gloomy.

I made quite basic
versions of all components, so this is also a quite effortless meal
and can be easily made fairly quickly when you're feeling blue.

Roasted potatoes:

400 g potatoes

1 tsp vegetable
oil

Smoked paprika

Brush the potatoes
with vegetable oil and sprinkle smoked paprika on the top. Roast in
the oven until soft with a nice roasted skin.

Broccoli cheese:

1 broccoli

1 onions

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp vegetable
stock powder

Ground black
pepper

Salt

100 g grated
Cheddar and Mozzarella mix

Cut the broccoli
into florets and steam them until they are almost done. Chop the
onions and garlic cloves finely and cook them in olive oil until
soft. Add the seasoning and combine with the steamed florets. Put
into an oven dish, cover with cheese and bake until the cheese has
melted and the top is golden brown.

Mushroom sauce:

250 g baby button
mushrooms

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1 tsp olive oil

150 ml single
cream

Ground black
pepper

Salt

Fresh thyme

Slice the
mushrooms and chop the onion and garlic finely. Cook them in olive
oil for a few minutes and then add the cream. Season and let simmer
until the cream has been infused with the flavours.

23 August 2015

Koshari is an
Egyptian dish made with rice, lentils, macaroni, vermicelli and
chickpeas and topped with a tomato sauce and fried onions. I've had
it quite a few times as street food and have totally fallen in love
with the dish. What scared me off making it myself previously, was
the amount of components. I was basically fearing I wouldn't have
enough pots to cook everything separately. Now I felt brave enough
and started making Koshari. It turned out that it wasn't such a
horrible multi-tasking exercise, but quite straight forward instead,
as most of the processes are simple. I used for example ready made
fried onions to save that stage. There can be several variations of
Koshari and the below recipe is my version of the dish.

Tomato sauce:

300 g tomatoes

1 small onion

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp tomato
purée

Chilli flakes

Ground cumin

Ground nutmeg

Ground black
pepper

Salt

Other ingredients:

1 cup brown rice

1 cup puy lentils

1 cup macaroni

1 cup vermicelli
pasta

1 can chickpeas

2 vegetable stock
cubes

½ tsp smoked
paprika

Fried onions

Method

First make the
tomato sauce. Chop the onion and garlic cloves finely, cook them in
olive oil, add the tomatoes and cook slowly under lid. Season to
taste. Add more chilli flakes and other seasoning, if you prefer a
very spicy sauce. When the sauce is almost done, start with the other
preparations.

Cook the rice and
the lentils with a vegetable stock cube each in separate pots.
Basically everything is cooked separately and layered into a bowl in
the end.

Cook the macaroni
and vermicelli (break the vermicelli into about 1 cm long pieces
first).

Warm the chickpeas
up and season them with smoked paprika. Normally I would use dried
chickpeas, but this time I chose the canned ones in order to save
some additional cooking time.

Layer the
components, top with tomato sauce and fried onions and enjoy.

22 August 2015

I'm so sorry that I haven't been
posting many recipes lately. The holiday threw me out of the normal
routine a little bit and it was hard getting back during the first
normal week. Luckily I didn't find work too bad and managed to cook a
couple of times in the week. I have been eating a lot comfort food in
order to get used to the routines again. Now I made a salad for a
change where warm and cold bits are combined and it's quite filling
with its lentils and tofu. Today was a really hot day again, so a
salad is quite a suitable meal.

Ingredients

3 baby gem lettuce

200 g smoked tofu

1 tsp vegetable
oil

200 g cherry
tomatoes

6 mini courgettes

½ cup puy lentils

1 vegetable stock
cube

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Salt

Ground black
pepper

Method

Cut the tofu into
small cubes and fry them in vegetable oil until firm.

Cut the courgettes
into smaller pieces and brush them with olive oil. Roast them in the
oven until soft with some roasting marks.

Cook the lentils
in water with added vegetable stock cube until done. Then remove the
cooking water.

Cut the gem
lettuce and tomatoes into smaller bits.

Combine the
ingredients. I prefer eating the warm components warm, but they are
perfectly good cooled down as well.

19 August 2015

As I already wrote in a previous post
that I would write separately about my holiday shopping not to
clutter the holiday photo post too much. So I'll introduce here some
of the food and kitchen products that I brought with me from Finland
to the UK. I didn't have the time to use any of them much yet, but
they will surely become handy, tasty or amusing in no time.

My absolute favourites were the
hedgehog tea towels by Lapun Kankurit that I got in Helsinki. I
already have some other tea towels from the same makers, but these
must be the best ones ever. I'm not revealing them fully in the
photos, as they will be making many appearances on the blog in the
future.

Then I purchased also from the Lapuan
Kankurit shop an interesting tea in a retro tin. It's called
Kyläkaupan Teesekoitus (tea blend of the village shop) made by
Metkatuote, and it's a blend of green and white tea flavoured with
lingonberries, vanilla and lotus flowers. I'm sure the tea will be
tasty, but don't you just have to love the tin!

My mum gave me this lovely coffee tin
with cute animal artwork on it. There is also good Finnish coffee and a
wooden measuring spoon within. This makes a great addition to my
coffee shelf.

I love using healthy berry powders in
breakfast bowls and baking. The dried powders are a convenient way of
storing some of the berry goodness of the Finnish forests. Now I
filled in my dry cupboard with new ones and am going to taste the
lingonberry one soon. Lingonberry was somewhat a theme here, as I
also bought sugar with added lingonberry flakes. That should be good
for baking too. I'm not quite sure yet where I will use the sea
buckthorn syrup, but I'm sure I'll think of something. Dried
chanterelles were also a mandatory item on my shopping list as usual.
In the background there's a dried nettle bag hiding.

I can't get enough of mentioning my
local Napue Gin by Kyrö Distillery Company and of course had to
bring a bottle with me, so good times are ahead.

Herra Hakkaraisen Täysksylitolipastilli
are tooth friendly dragees in strawberry and pear flavours. They are
good for after meals and in between.

This Kasviskeittokirja is a Finnish
translation of the German original Vegetarianisches Kochbuch für
Freunde der natürlichen Lebensweise by Eduard Baltzer, the
founder of the first German vegetarian society. The original was
published in 1869, if the info that I found was correct. It's from
around that time anyway and contains old vegetarian recipes and
nourishment info flavoured with the attitudes of the time. It's quite
funny to read at times, but many nutritional facts haven't changed
from those days. Maybe I'll cook something from this book soon and
then I'll make sure that I'll post it here.

I always buy lovely napkins where ever
I go and this time I took with me Kirsikkapuisto (cherry park)
by the Finnish fashion designer Jukka Rintala and a white horse
napkin Nøkken som hvit hest by the Norwegian artist Theodor
Kittelsen from Ateneum's The Magic North exhibition, which by the way
was truly magical.

I also bought my favourite cheese
Oltermanni, rye nachos and crisps, some dried soya and pea protein
products, chocolates and rye bread. It seems that I only bought food!
Well isn't that quite important anyway? Have you done some
interesting food shopping lately, on your holiday or at home?

17 August 2015

Every nice holiday
goes to an end at some point, so did also mine. Today was my first
day back at work, and I actually found it alright. However yesterday,
when I planned my packed breakfast/lunch, I wanted to make sure that
I have nice and comforting food with me to make the transition to the
normal rhythm easier.

For breakfast I
took some fresh raspberries and blueberries and a pretzel roll with
my favourite cheese Oltermanni with me. I absolutely adore pretzel rolls and it's about time to make some myself again! I enjoyed the breakfast with pineapple juice with a hint of lime (that stuff can wake up/refresh
anyone) and of course a mandatory cup of coffee.

As lunch I had the
left-overs from my Sunday lunch, a vegetarian pasta bolognese. A
similar recipe can be found here, only this time I used dried soya
mince to make the sauce. Then of course I had my water bottle with me
to be re-filled throughout the day.

This food gave me
quite a nice boost for the day, but I'm afraid that I'll have to go
with lighter meals soon. We'll see. Would you be interested in
occasionally seeing my packed lunches here on the blog, as I tend to
take one with me every day?

Have a great week,
and there will be a couple Finland themed posts yet to come, once I
get them written.

16 August 2015

I have returned back home, so my summer
holiday to Finland is over. I have collected some of my activities,
places visited, landscapes etc. to this post. My Instagram followers
might already have a better idea what I've been up to, but here are
some more photos for you to see. It was of course a lovely break and
I was able to relax and spend time with my family. I'm also happy to
be back home.

In the beginning of the holiday I
visited the city of Tampere. It's a nice town between two lakes and I
was also taken on a lovely boat trip on Näsijärvi (I already posted
about it here). In the centre of Tampere there is an impressive work
of art by Kaarina Kaikkonen with jackets in different shades hanging
over Satakunnankatu.

I spent most of the time relaxing in
the countryside with my family just picking berries, watching crops
grow, cooking and eating. Once again I visited the old animals' home
in Ylistaro, the 18th Century Market and Kyrö Distillery
Company in Isokyrö (post here), and of course went to nearby forests
for walks and foraging. Blueberries are in season and still a few wild strawberries could be found in the edges of forests. Lingonberries are now starting to ripen. I very much grew up picking berries in the forest and it's still a nice activity. However it's hard work, if you want to pick serious amounts.

I also picked some white currants in my granddad's garden. They are as tasty as red currants, only a bit paler. I couldn't think of anything to cook with them in this limited time, but they were nice to eat as vitamin bombs in between.

By the way, the bridge below is on my old way to the primary school and I walked those couple of kilometres again. The bridge is accessible only for pedestrians and cyclists these days.

Before I returned to the UK, I spent a
few days in the capital Helsinki and made some incredibly cute
shopping and visited food markets and bars. The food offering on the Helsinki Market Square is amazing in the summer, every stall bursting of local produce. I would've loved to buy new potatoes straight from a boat, but unfortunately couldn't have transported them back home. There was also an international food market on Narinkkatori, a very interesting event. In Helsinki I also got to taste a mouthwatering wild strawberry and rhubarb cider.

I decided to make a
separate post of my foodie shopping, as I didn't want to make this
one too long. There are quite many photos here anyway, but I hope
you'll enjoy them, as I wanted to share these different impressions
with you.

Who is The VegHog?

A vegetarian hobby cook and urban gardener born in Finland, currently living in Denmark. I try to develop my cooking skills by making a wide variety of veggie dishes, some of them traditional and some new creations. My favourites include veggie burgers, squashes, organic and local produce, cider, spelt, rye, pizzas, pasta dishes, risottos and sea-buckthorn.
Follow theveghog on Instagram and @TheVegHog on Twitter!